


Of Drawing and Dragons

by Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry)



Category: Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher - Bruce Coville, Magic Shop - Bruce Coville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageorwizardry/pseuds/Age%20or%20Wizardry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discipline: doing something worth doing, whether you want to or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Drawing and Dragons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schiarire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/schiarire/gifts).



It wasn't fair. On Hallowe'en night ( _All Hallow's Eve,_ the rhyme whispered in his mind), he'd finally spoken to Tiamat again. After that, he finally felt like drawing again, and he started talking again to Specimen and even to Mary Lou. (Although not together; they still didn't like each other much. Jeremy thought he was going to have to come up with some sort of plan about that.) And after _that_ , almost as soon as he started to feel like himself again after the long grey expanse that had been his summer and fall—he got sick with the flu and had to stay home from school for more than a week. He was miserable with fever whenever he was awake, and the only silver lining was that he got to spend all his dreaming hours with Tiamat in her world. After Hallowe'en, he had expected to be able to spend every night with Tiamat in dreams, but now he passed most of several days that way as well.

Jeremy loved being able to speak to Tiamat again, loved still being able to spend time with her—and being in her skin, knowing how it felt to fly with _wings_ was something he would never have traded for anything. But it was also true that he missed being separate from Tiamat in the same place with her, being able to hug her neck or stroke her nose. He tried not to think very hard about how he would never be able to do that again, and instead enjoy the way they could still be together.

Tiamat was learning some dragonish sort of navigation. You couldn't often see the stars in the sky of her new home, thanks to all the smoke from the volcanoes, but apparently dragons could find their way over the oceans at night using the colors and patterns of the phosphorescence that rode on the waves. (Jeremy didn't yet know how they navigated over land—did they use rock formations?) But Tiamat wasn't finding it as intuitive as communicating with Jeremy in colors and pictures had been. _My teacher says that my Hatcher is distracting me,_ she sent at one point, lashing her tail in frustration. Jeremy wasn't sure whether Tiamat agreed with her teacher or not. He was enjoying spending time with her even if things weren't going well.

At last Tiamat sent the image of herself stuck in the gateway between two worlds, but without the pain and grief of the real event. This image had a distinct tint of joking-ness about it somehow; the bits of eggshell floating in the gateway almost seemed to sparkle gold with fond laughter. The image of Tiamat changed to one of Jeremy stuck in the gateway, and then Tiamat gently but firmly pushed the image of Jeremy out through one side.

 _We don't want **you** getting stuck between worlds, either,_ Tiamat told him, with a ripple of glittering dragon laughter. The portal remained visibly open, though, unlike the real one after Tiamat had passed through: a reminder that, while Tiamat might never be able to physically pass through the portal into Jeremy's world again, Jeremy could cross the dream portal whenever he wanted to. Well, whenever he wanted to and he was asleep. _Come back soon! But go away now,_ Jeremy translated.

 _I guess I can see how it might not be good for me to get in the habit of sleeping all day and spending it with Tiamat,_ he thought as he awoke. It even turned out that he did feel a little better that day, awake in his own world.

* * *

At breakfast he was thinking about what he'd like to draw that day, and Mr. Kravitz popped into his head. "Dad, what's _discipline_ mean? I mean, I _kind of_ know, but what does it mean exactly. Practically speaking."

Jeremy's dad raised his eyebrows, preparing a response that he clearly thought was going to be hilarious. Jeremy didn't find out what the joke was, though, because Jeremy's mom gave his dad a certain stern look, and after that all his dad said was, "Well, discipline can mean a few different things. What's the context, kiddo?"

"Something Mr. Kravitz said, last year. He was talking about my drawing, and he said that I had talent but no discipline."

"Hm. I didn't know he had ever said anything _nice_ about your art; that's a pleasant surprise. I guess I would say that discipline means doing something you don't want to do—well, doing something whether you want to do it or not. You like drawing, after all. Maybe he just thought you needed to practice more."

Jeremy's mother gently modified the definition: "Doing something _worth doing_ , whether you want to or not."

 _Well, then. I must have some discipline already,_ thought Jeremy, thinking of sending Tiamat home. He hadn't wanted to do that at all, but he'd recognized how necessary it was and done it anyway.

"Thanks," said Jeremy.

* * *

He spent the rest of the morning after his parents left for work alternately reading, idly scratching sketches of some of the tiny shoreline flowers from Tiamat's world in the margins, and staring out the window while leaning despondently back on his pillows.

After scrounging up some lunch (for several cats and Grief as well as himself), he decided to try doing something whether he wanted to or not. _If having discipline means I should draw every day... and probably that I should try things I don't like, and practice things even if I'm not good at them..._ He started writing down ideas: subjects for drawings, techniques to try, restrictions to place on himself.

Specimen's visit after school found Jeremy still awake and laboring over a piece of paper.

"So my mom says I should like stand way over _here,_ " Specimen said, comically planting himself just inside the door, before he uprooted and dragged the desk chair over next to Jeremy's bed. "And that maybe I should wear a face mask or something, because she doesn't want me catching it too." He flopped into the chair in disregard of any threat from germs. "Whatcha doing?"

Jeremy explained his idea and showed Spess what he'd been working on.

Specimen said, excited, "So, if the theme was _snake_ —"

The door opened and Mary Lou came in. Jeremy and Specimen both looked up at her. "Hi, Jeremy—" She stopped when she noticed Specimen. "Hi, Specimen. Jeremy, your mom sent me up. I didn't know someone else was already here..." She trailed off awkwardly.

"We're doing art stuff," Specimen said, and turned back to Jeremy. "So, if the theme was _snake_ ," he repeated, deliberately.

"You could draw a snake, or a person with a snake tattoo, or a scene with lots of animals including a snake, or a, a spaceship that looked like a snake—" Spess snorted. "—Hey, there are more ridiculous things, and anyway the point isn't that everything'll be a great idea. Some of this stuff is probably going to look bad, or ridiculous, or not turn out well. We're coming up with kind of a game," he explained to Mary Lou, "with rules, where we draw something different every day to practice, or—stuff," he concluded weakly.

"That sounds neat. I read an article once about a photographer who went into the Arctic for sixty days and only took one photograph each day," Mary Lou offered.

"Why would someone do that?" Specimen said. "Think of all the cool pictures you'd miss taking that way!"

"It was to make him really think about each picture he took, instead of taking lots that he didn't really pay attention to," Mary Lou said. "Imagine what it would be like, looking at everything and thinking, _Is this the one picture I want to take today? Is this the best shot I'm going to get? Or if I take it, will I see something better a few minutes later and miss my chance for it?_ "

"Like Prince Caspian wondering whether now is the time of greatest peril, when he should blow Susan's horn, or if he waits will it get worse and he should blow it then," Jeremy said.

Jeremy still didn't know why Mary Lou had been the only other person who could see Tiamat, but he wondered if this was part of why. Tiamat had told him that she'd chosen him because she liked the pictures in his head, but she'd been invisible to Specimen, so her choice couldn't be based on artistic ability alone. But Mary Lou had read a lot of the same books as Jeremy, and Spess barely read at all. Even if she couldn't draw them, maybe Mary Lou had pictures of dragons in her head, and maybe Tiamat had seen those pictures and liked them, figuring that Mary Lou was someone who could be trusted.

"And what if you waited all day for it and then messed that picture _up_ ," Specimen groaned.

"Yeah, that would be really frustrating," said Jeremy. "But I guess he'd think: _I can always try again tomorrow_."

"What you're doing sounds like a really cool idea, Jeremy. I'd like to do something like it for writing. The advice is to write every day, but I don't always, and this might be a good way to make sure that I do."

"Yeah, but this is _art stuff,_ " Specimen said, "and anyway we came up with it, so you can't use it for writing or anything else!"

"Who says!" Mary Lou shot back.

Could it actually be more agonizing to be alone in a room with what might be his two best friends than for Mr. Kravitz to embarrass him in front of an entire classroom? Jeremy thought it might be. But he forged ahead, thinking that at least neither Spess nor Mary Lou might laugh at him.

"You guys!" Jeremy said. "I want to be friends with both of you. I mean, I _am_ friends with both of you. And if you don't want to be friends with each other, that's okay, but could you please not be mean to each other?" Encouraged by their silence, he continued. "Spess, you know I love doing art with you, and I definitely want to play this art game with you. But I also think it would be cool to make an art-and-writing game with Mary Lou, and I bet she could come up with some neat ideas for it, just like you could. So, what do you say?" Jeremy breathed into the silence, feeling hot, as though bright lights were shining on him. He wondered if he would have said any of that if he weren't still feeling funny from the fever, light-headed and a little disconnected from everything.

After a moment, Spess spoke up. "Okay, truce," he said—not quite looking at Mary Lou, it was true. But she nodded at Jeremy, and he decided he'd take it.

"Maybe if we use dice or something to pick which rules apply for each day?" Mary Lou suggested, and they were off on a roll. All three of them, together.

* * *

That night, Jeremy dropped off to sleep shortly after dinner and found Tiamat with a shining glow of satisfaction in her head. _I figured it out!_ she announced, and informed him with pride that tonight they'd be traveling to an island by the... Jeremy translated the name as something like "The Purple-Blue Evening Complicated Shape Shadow of the Mountain Searoad." It was a traditional reward for what Tiamat had achieved.

 _I think I've figured out something, too,_ Jeremy replied, and settled in to enjoy flying with his dragon.


End file.
